What started last month as a discussion about sidewalk requirements in Springfield turned into a short, but heated, confrontation between the mayor and a member of the planning and zoning commission Thursday night.

Mayor Bob Stephens addressed the commission to voice concern about a statement commissioner Andrew Cline made at the Aug. 6 planning and zoning meeting.

Stephens said he objected “strenuously to the citizens and taxpayers of this city being characterized as parasites.”

Cline said that statement was taken very much out of context.

What happened at the August meeting

During the August meeting, the commission was hearing an ordinance change that would, in some cases, remove a requirement for developers to build sidewalks. City staff members said the current language sometimes unreasonably required sidewalks, and they wanted a way to allow the public works department to waive that requirement in some cases.

Cline made what he called an “impassioned plea to my fellow commissioners to vote no.”

He said a reworking of the ordinance could be in order, but otherwise, “this basically lets them out of the fee. I’m not so sure that’s such a good thing.”

Cline asked why developers should get out of building sidewalks or paying a fee if they don’t, and why an additional burden was being placed on the public works department. He, and many other commissioners later, also raised issue with the way the process was designed — to make the commission review appeals on the sidewalk issue.

Then, Cline spoke to the issue more specifically of sidewalks, and this statement is the one that Stephens attacked at Thursday’s planning and zoning meeting.

“If you look at the built environment of the United States of America, anyone can see that in the post-war era what has been built has been built to accommodate automobiles and not the parasites that infest them, otherwise known as human beings,” Cline said.

During the August meeting, Cline went on to say that asking developers to build sidewalks is “part of our better nature of correcting 60 years of damage that we’ve done to our built environment.”

He added: “In Springfield, Missouri, we have a poverty rate twice the national rate. Our median family income is $20,000 below the national. We have a lot of people out there walking around, and our code, at the moment, protects them by ensuring that developers build sidewalks.”

Back to Thursday’s meeting

After Stephens read the quote that ended with the parasite reference, he raised his objection to the language, saying Cline had insulted people who come to the community for a variety of reasons. He appeared to specifically defend drivers.

“City Council has indicated on numerous occasions that Springfield is open for business,” Stephens said. “Our policy is to actively seek development and redevelopment. We actively seek more and better jobs for our citizens and we actively solicit those sports events and tournaments that bring thousands of visitors to our community, our restaurants and our hotels. And in most cases, those thousands of visitors drive here.”

Stephens added that if a commissioner was “unclear about the duties, responsibilities and limits of those duties,” he would ask the city manager to schedule additional training. He also said if the commissioner, who he never named as Cline, did not feel he could fulfill his duties, “without publicly insulting and denigrating both the public he serves and existing council policies, he’s free to resign and run for a council seat, which is truly the venue for those types of policy discussions.”

Cline fired back, saying the mayor hadn’t understood the context and that he was implying pedestrians are often treated like parasites.

“The lack of understanding of the context of that statement that you just displayed is massive,” Cline said. “If you were a student of mine and said that in my class, I would smack you down for the complete lack of ability to understand the context.”

Cline is a professor of journalism at Missouri State University.

The follow up

Reached by phone Friday morning, Cline said Stephens was either purposefully taking the statement out of context to make a point, or truly didn’t understand the context.

“Last night, the mayor spent political capital and employed a cheap logical fallacy to swat a fly, and I have no idea why the fly needed swatting,” he said. “I’m at a complete loss as to why that happened.”

Cline said anyone who would review the August meeting, and his statement, would see that he was “privileging the pedestrian” by trying to keep a provision in the code that protects them.

He said he made the “impassioned plea” because he thought the amendment was both a “bureaucratic nightmare” and the city should be building sidewalks.

“It’s plain to see, watching that video, that I did not call the people of Springfield parasites,” Cline said.

An attempt to reach Stephens on Friday was not successful.

Cline said he hopes Stephens just didn’t understand the context of his statement, and wasn’t operating in a more insidious way.

“I hope it’s not the case that he did it on purpose, because I have a great deal of respect for Bob,” Cline said. “I like the guy. I voted for him and would continue to vote for him.”

Editor’s note: Reporter Stephen Herzog took some classes from Andrew Cline while earning a journalism degree at Missouri State University.